Confluxe founders Rajesh Narkar and Louis Coucke have unveiled their first global fashion partnership, bringing Brazilian premium menswear brand Urban Performance to India. But this is more than the launch of another international label. It marks the introduction of what the founders believe is an entirely new menswear category—Smartwear—while signalling the beginning of Confluxe's larger ambition to become a technology-led platform that helps global fashion and lifestyle brands establish, build and scale their businesses in India.

The timing is significant. The boundaries between formalwear, business casual and athleisure have steadily blurred as hybrid work, business travel and increasingly fluid professional lifestyles reshape how Indian men dress. Today's professionals move effortlessly between boardrooms, airports, cafés, coworking spaces, client meetings and evening engagements, demanding apparel that is as versatile as their daily schedules. Urban Performance, launched in 2022 by Aramis Inc., one of Brazil's leading menswear companies with nearly three decades of heritage, has been built around this very insight. Through Confluxe, the brand now enters India with a digital-first strategy that its founders believe is ideally suited to a rapidly evolving premium menswear market.

Urban Performance: The First Step in Confluxe's Journey

For Rajesh Narkar and Louis Coucke, Urban Performance represents much more than their first international brand partnership—it is the first milestone in Confluxe's long-term vision. Founded by the former Myntra, AJIO and H&M executives, the Bengaluru-based company recently raised US$1.6 million in pre-seed funding from Wavemaker Partners and Kriscore Capital to create a technology-led omnichannel platform that helps international fashion and lifestyle brands enter and scale in India.

Rather than functioning as a conventional distributor or franchise operator, Confluxe combines market-entry strategy, digital commerce, merchandising, retail operations, data-led consumer insights and supply-chain capabilities to help global brands navigate India's increasingly complex retail ecosystem. Urban Performance is the first expression of that strategy and, according to the founders, only the beginning of a broader portfolio of international brands that the company intends to introduce to Indian consumers.

Why Urban Performance, Why India?

The decision to launch Urban Performance in India was driven by more than the country's growing appetite for premium brands. According to the founders, the brand was created in Brazil to solve a very specific consumer problem that increasingly mirrors the lives of India's urban professionals.

"Urban Performance was built in Brazil to solve a specific problem—men who move constantly between professional and personal contexts within a single day, with no clothing system built for that reality. When we saw the product performing in its home market, the opportunity in India was immediately clear. This category does not exist here yet. That white space, and the quality of the product sitting inside it, is what brought us to India."

The founders also point out that Brazil and India share several similarities, including climatic conditions and increasingly dynamic urban lifestyles, making the current Urban Performance collection an intentional fit for Indian consumers. Future collections, whether from Urban Performance or other brands introduced by Confluxe, will continue to evolve around Indian lifestyles and consumer needs rather than simply replicating global assortments.

Increasingly, India is no longer viewed as a market that international brands enter after establishing themselves elsewhere. It is emerging as an early growth market where brands can build meaningful scale from the outset, making it a strategic priority for companies with long-term global ambitions.

Creating a New Menswear Category

Urban Performance is not positioning itself as another premium menswear label competing with traditional formalwear brands. Instead, it is attempting to establish an entirely new category that the founders call Smartwear.

"Smartwear isn't a segment with an existing shelf. It sits between performance wear and tailoring, and the men who'll want it don't yet have a word for what they're buying."

Rather than putting a numerical value on the opportunity, the founders believe the consumer shift itself is the story.

"What we'll say with confidence is that the directional shift—warm climate, longer wear-days, and a refusal to choose between comfort and authority—is real and accelerating. We'd rather earn the category than forecast it."

That philosophy also reflects Rajesh Narkar's own approach to building businesses. Reflecting on the launch, he observed that after more than three decades of building brands across markets and categories, what continues to excite him most is "great product"—products that quietly become indispensable to everyday life.

Over the past few years, he and Louis Coucke closely observed how men's lifestyles were changing around the world and concluded that the modern man had evolved much faster than his wardrobe.

"He moves seamlessly from work to travel, from meetings to evenings out, from airports and cafés to boardrooms. Yet much of what the market offers still asks him to choose—formal or casual, comfort or style, performance or sophistication."

That belief eventually took the founders across global markets in search of brands built around genuine product innovation rather than seasonal fashion trends. Their search ended in São Paulo with Urban Performance.

Urban Performance has been designed around what the company describes as the '9 am to 9 pm lifestyle'—professionals whose days extend far beyond conventional office hours and whose wardrobes need to perform across multiple environments.

Instead of creating isolated products, the company has developed what it describes as a complete wardrobe system, where every garment is engineered around performance, comfort and refined tailoring. The collection combines Peruvian Pima Cotton, Modal and Silk with high-performance fibres such as Polyamide and Elastane through four proprietary technology platforms—Air Tech, Moovex, Hyperflex and Tech Flex.

Each technology has been developed to address specific performance requirements including breathability, flexibility, stretch, recovery and unrestricted movement during long working days. Rather than highlighting the number of products in the collection, the founders believe the real story lies in the engineering behind them.

"Urban Performance is built as a wardrobe system. The through-line is fabric intelligence rather than volume."

The collection is built around four core product pillars—Fibre Innovation, Fabric Engineering, Garment Technology, and Product Development & Manufacturing—which together create garments designed to retain their shape, comfort and performance throughout the day.

Beyond Fabric Innovation

While advanced fabric technology remains central to Urban Performance's proposition, the founders believe the larger innovation lies in responding to the changing lifestyles of modern professionals.

"Up till now, men have had to choose between formalwear and athleisure. One looks good but feels rigid, the other feels good but looks too informal. Smartwear sits in an intelligent space in between."

The garments combine premium natural fibres with high-performance materials, creating what the founders describe as "the intelligence of activewear expressed through fine tailoring."

Richard Stad, Founder of Urban Performance and CEO of Aramis Inc., says the brand was created from the belief that menswear needed to evolve alongside changing lifestyles.

"We created a brand that brings together technology, design and tailoring to deliver versatile garments that transition effortlessly across every moment of the day."

Louis Coucke believes the same philosophy is particularly relevant in India.

"India doesn't reward what worked elsewhere. It rewards what you're willing to rebuild—and keep rebuilding," he recently observed, describing Urban Performance as clothing that "holds its shape, and its composure, however long the day runs."

Digital First, Omnichannel Next

Urban Performance's India rollout will follow a phased omnichannel strategy, beginning with direct-to-consumer digital commerce before gradually expanding into physical retail.

"We are digital first. We test scale to understand consumer behaviour and build the brand. This will be followed by partnerships with marketplaces, key multi-brand retail partners and, eventually, our own stores."

The founders believe understanding consumer behaviour and building a community around the brand are more important during the initial phase than pursuing rapid expansion. This measured approach will allow Confluxe to refine its assortment, understand customer preferences and build awareness for a category that is still new to Indian consumers.

Building in India, Building for India

The company's long-term commitment extends beyond selling imported products.

The founders confirm that Make in India already forms part of their roadmap, with manufacturing partnerships currently being evaluated for the second year of operations. They also reiterate that future product development will increasingly respond to Indian lifestyles, climate and consumer expectations.

Equally significant is the way Confluxe intends to measure success.

"We're not running on a typical revenue milestone. We're focused on building the brand community and product experiences for our customers. Our ambition is to build a strong presence in the premium menswear category and eventually become a brand customers actively seek out on their own."

More Than a Brand Launch

Urban Performance's arrival also reflects a broader shift taking place within India's premium fashion ecosystem. Traditionally, international fashion brands entered India through distributors, licensing arrangements or franchise partners after achieving scale in mature markets. Increasingly, however, specialist platforms are emerging that combine technology, digital commerce, merchandising, supply-chain capabilities and omnichannel execution under one roof. Confluxe is positioning itself within this new generation of market-entry partners, with Urban Performance serving as the first demonstration of that model.

The launch also highlights several larger trends shaping India's premium apparel market. Consumers are increasingly seeking functionality alongside fashion, creating opportunities for technically engineered clothing. International brands are choosing India much earlier in their global expansion journeys, recognising the country's rapidly growing premium consumer base. At the same time, category creation is becoming as important as brand building, particularly in lifestyle segments where consumer behaviour is evolving faster than traditional product classifications.

Whether Smartwear ultimately becomes an established retail category remains to be seen. Even its founders acknowledge that the category does not yet occupy a recognised shelf in the market. Yet they remain convinced that the underlying consumer need already exists.

If that conviction proves right, Urban Performance may achieve something few fashion brands attempt. Rather than simply launching another premium menswear label in India, it could help define an entirely new category for the country's modern professionals while marking the beginning of Confluxe's broader journey as a gateway for global fashion brands entering one of the world's fastest-growing retail markets.